ATMs belong to or are operated by financial institutions or banks which issue ATM cards to their customers or cardholders. Each financial institution may be a member of one or more financial networks, e.g. interbank or ATM networks. The financial networks, such as Plus® and Cirrus®, enable ATM cardholders to access ATMs belonging to other financial institutions within the same financial network. A host processor or server of a financial network facilitates communications between the ATMs and financial institutions within the same financial network.
ATMs can be found at many locations around the world and are typically used by people for cash withdrawals, among other services and functions provided by the ATMs. At some locations with more human traffic, e.g. shopping malls, there may be a greater density of ATMs. However, there are instances when the ATMs at/near/around a shopping mall run out of cash and are unable to dispense cash to the next customer or cardholder using the ATMs. In this instance, the cardholder would become dissatisfied, especially after standing in line or queuing for some time. In addition, if the cardholder is in need of cash, he/she may need to travel some distance away from the shopping mall to withdraw cash from another ATM. The cardholder is also less likely to return to the shopping mall after withdrawing the cash, even if the cardholder initially intended to make cash purchases from merchants operating in the shopping mall. This eventually results in loss of sales for the merchants, and indirectly so from the lack of cash in the ATMs at/near/around the shopping mall.
The lack of cash in the ATMs is likely due to the financial institutions operating the ATMs insufficiently replenishing the cash in a timely manner, resulting in cash demand exceeding cash supply. Various models exist for financial institutions to estimate the cash levels in their ATMs based on historical data on cash withdrawals from their ATMs. However, for each financial institution, such models only consider historical data of ATMs operated by said financial institution, and do not take into account the cash usage behaviour of ATMs operated by other financial institutions. The historical data is thus highly localized and insufficient for accurate analysis or optimum results.
Conversely, some financial institutions may have excess or sub-optimum amounts of cash in their ATMs, resulting in cash supply exceeding cash demand. As such, the excess cash may remain stagnant or unused in the ATMs. The excess cash could be better utilized by financial institutions, such as for investing in government bonds which could earn the financial institutions higher interest revenue.
Therefore, in order to address or alleviate at least one of the aforementioned problems and/or disadvantages, there is a need to provide an electronic system and method for management of cash in ATMs, in which there is at least one improved feature over the aforementioned prior art.